Suchergebnisse

While also valuing useful citizenship, Rousseau offers what is perhaps the most substantive modern account and defense of idleness. According to Rousseau, idleness' attraction lies in its relation to human nature and its capacity for producing our highest happiness. However, Rousseau is also careful to show that most existing forms of idleness are false, and true idleness is a difficult achievement. The happiness available in idleness can only be attained when free from vanity, obligation, and foresight. This specific form of idleness is also the only form that is morally and politically defensible. Though Rousseau argues, in the First Discourse, that the useless are pernicious, this is only true of the falsely idle that seek to undermine common morality and political attachment. True idleness, while still useless, satisfies Rousseau's core moral principle to not harm.

Abstract
The concept of leisure found in Aristotle's corpus is both elusive and challenging. It eludes categorization into our current understandings of work and play while at the same time challenging those very conceptions. Here, I attempt to come to grips with Aristotelian leisure by (1) demonstrating its centrality in Aristotle's thought, (2) explaining leisure as primarily a 'way of being' rather than merely the absence of occupation or one of several preconditions to the virtues, and (3) exploring what leisure might mean to liberal democracy. As a 'way of being', Aristotelian leisure is more than an absence of work, but is a positive comportment that itself requires virtues, material means, and an education.